Charles Street

With a pending deal for the city's acquisition of a key corner parcel, long-delayed plans to redevelop a stretch of Charles Street just north of Penn Station are poised to move forward, though the real estate slowdown might force revisions in a more than two-year-old proposal, a city development official said yesterday. Baltimore Development Corp. has reached an agreement to buy the long-shuttered Chesapeake Restaurant in the 1700 block of N. Charles St. for an undisclosed amount from owner Robert A. Sapero, said Paul Dombrowski, director of planning and design for BDC, ending the city's effort to condemn the property.

A section of Charles Street will be closed on Saturday from 7 a.m. until 5 p.m. while a crane is being operated, the Baltimore City Department of Transportation announced. Weather permitting, Charles Street will close to through traffic between Saratoga and Mulberry streets. Motorists traveling in the area are encouraged to use alternate routes. The following detour will be in effect: Northbound Charles Street traffic will be detoured west on Saratoga Street, north on Park Avenue, then east on Mulberry Street, back to Charles Street Originally published April 22, 2005, 10:49 AM EDT

Robin Budish spends her days rallying support for an idea she says will make downtown Baltimore more livable — building a streetcar line along Charles Street. Budish was hired last fall as community organizer for the Baltimore Streetcar Campaign, a grass-roots group that believes a fixed rail trolley system would attract residents, boost civic pride, spur economic development and benefit tourism, retail and cultural institutions. Budish, the former executive director of Fells Point Main Street, and also a former Historic Charles Street Association executive director, has been meeting with downtown residents, business owners and other stakeholders.

Peter Michael Yagjian, a restaurateur whose Mount Vernon Stable and Saloon brought baby back rib platters to Charles Street, died of a heart attack Tuesday at his Fells Point home. He was 64. Customers said that at his restaurant's peak, lines would form at its door on weekend nights. Mr. Yagjian, as the host and greeter, would dart around tables trying to accommodate one more party in his crowded and noisy bistro that featured a reproduction Egyptian mummy case and other eclectic decorations.

Un Kim's tastes in restaurants aren't exactly meatloaf and mashed potatoes. At her all-night Papermoon Diner near the Johns Hopkins University, waiters nicknamed "moon walkers" dish up vegetarian "weed burgers" and artichoke omelettes in a room ornamented with Pez candy dispensers, mannequin limbs and Barbie dolls dangling on fishing lines from the blades of whirling ceiling fans. The 44-year-old South Korean immigrant is as much postmodern pop artist as cook. So she figured she'd be the perfect person to rescue an ailing restaurant that for decades was a rallying place for the city's artistic community: Louie's Bookstore Cafe at 518 N. Charles St. Kim recently signed a contract to buy the Louie's building from a partnership led by Jimmy Rouse, who founded Louie's in 1981 and has played a leading role in efforts to revitalize the historic but troubled Charles Street.

One by one, downtown stores have closed, gone bankrupt or left for the suburbs. Reamer's, the men's store on Charles Street that closed in April. W. Bell, the branch of the catalog retailer. Oscar Scherr, the jewelry store that left Calvert Street for Pikesville. Eddie Jacobs, the Light Street clothier that recently filed for bankruptcy.Conclusions are simple. The word in the neighborhood today is "blight." Right?Well, actually, no.In the face of a recession and budget cuts that have deeply shaken confidence in the city's ability to sustain economic growth, people like Penny Diamanti are quietly picking Charles Street up, dusting it off, and putting it back to work.

Adding more than 600 metered spaces and ending rush-hour parking restrictions on major downtown thoroughfares would help ease a long-standing parking crunch in the Charles Street corridor, a traffic consultant says. The Traffic Group Inc. said the new parking allowances would not worsen congestion - an issue city officials say is key - while making life easier for residents, merchants and cultural venues from Fayette Street to North Avenue. Some new spaces would come from eliminating loading zones and bus stops.

Municipal Mortgage & Equity LLC said yesterday that it will move its corporate headquarters from North Charles Street to the new Dugan's Wharf project at the Inner Harbor, an agreement that keeps one of Baltimore's largest financial-services companies in the city. "We are very excited about this," Mark K. Joseph, chairman and chief executive of Municipal Mortgage, better known by its nickname, MuniMae, said yesterday. "Our being down on the harbor will really be energizing for a lot of people ... and we're proud to be keeping our corporate headquarters in downtown Baltimore."

With commemorations of Sept. 11 expected to be low-key this year, a chain of people standing silently along Charles Street tomorrow afternoon may be one of the most visible demonstrations in the area for victims of the terrorist attacks. For the second year in a row, a local group of women is organizing what it calls a Peace Path, asking the public to line the sidewalks of Charles Street from the Inner Harbor to the Beltway between 4 p.m. and 6 p.m. Last year, about 1,000 people, from toddlers to senior citizens and Catholic nuns to college students, stood along the 12-mile stretch of the city's main artery.

New parking meters on North Charles Street have created such a community uproar that city officials have agreed "as a measure of good faith" to suspend installing meters in the area until after a public meeting in two months.With the arrival of new businesses and the recent renovation of the Johns Hopkins University's Homewood building -- which includes dormitories, offices and retail space -- residents near 31st Street are angry that the meters threaten their free parking and may cause a shortage of spaces.